Adobe Digital Imaging tid-bits, served in a dirty ashtray.

Save for Web in Photoshop CC 2015

In Photoshop CC 2015, we made some minor changes to a very popular and beloved feature: Save for Web. This feature is used for many purposes, from preparing assets for a website to optimizing high-res photos to creating animated GIFs. Because Save for Web is built on the former ImageReady product (now discontinued), the code is too antiquated to maintain and develop new features.

“Save for Web will not be removed without replacing its capabilities in a new and improved workflow.”see the FAQ below.

Adobe Generator is a new, modern, and more efficient platform for exporting image assets from Photoshop. We have been building new capabilities on top of this platform for the past two years, including the new Export As and Device Preview features. The Generator platform allows us to build new, streamlined workflows and incorporate more efficient compression algorithms like PNGQuant into Photoshop.

The new Export As workflows are a complete redesign of how you export assets out of Photoshop. Export As has new capabilities like adding padding to an image and exporting shapes and paths to SVG. We also introduced the Quick Export option, which allows you to export an entire document or selected layers very quickly with no dialog.

Going forward, we will no longer develop new features in Save for Web, which is why it now is labeled as “Legacy”. Don’t worry; no features have been removed from it and we know there are critical workflows that still require Save for Web. However, Save for Web does not support, for example, new Artboard documents.

We would love to hear your feedback as we continue to build out the future of Export workflows in Photoshop. The best place to leave feedback is on feedback.photoshop.com , where you can see other people’s suggestions, vote them up, and participate in a conversation with Photoshop engineers and designers.

Thank you for your continued feedback!

Stephen Nielson
Sr. Product Manager – Adobe Photoshop

FAQ

Was Save for Web removed from Photoshop CC 2015?

No, Save for Web is still available under File > Export menu.

I use Save for Web every day. Won’t the redesigned menu system slow down my workflow?

You can skip the menu entirely by using the existing keyboard shortcut: ctrl + alt + shift + s (win) and cmd + opt + shift + s (Mac). You can also customize the shortcut by going to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts…

Restart Photoshop CC 2015 for the panel to load in the Window>Extensions> menu

Were any features removed from Save for Web?

No, Save for Web was completely untouched except for moving it to the Export menu and adding the term “legacy”.

Does “legacy” mean that you are going to remove Save for Web in the future?

Perhaps. But rest assured that we will not remove Save for Web without providing those capabilities in a new and improved workflow. For example, we know many people still need the 2up view, target file size, Convert to sRGB, metadata options, and animated GIF capabilities. Save for Web will not be removed without replacing these capabilities in a new and improved workflow.

If there are still workflows missing, isn’t it too early to mark it ‘Legacy’?

Save for Web does not properly support Artboards and we have no plans to update it. The Legacy modifier is meant to communicate that Save for Web is still available, but no longer updated.

Will this change break my action or script?

No, this change does not impact your actions or scripts. They will continue working as they always have.

High-speed Internet connections have made image file-size and loading-times of little consequence for most users today.

I am mostly not in the least interested in posting small images for the convenience of iPhone viewing: if someone wants to see my photographs I prefer that they should be viewing them on nothing smaller than an iPad!

Like probably some 80% of Ps Subscribers, I need, on a daily basis, to be able to generate colour-managed, minimally compressed photographs (complete with EXIF content) and sized to the maximum dimensions permitted by the hosting website.

SFW offers that capability and it does it quickly and seamlessly.

“Export As” is currently totally incapable of fulfilling those functions.

I personally do everything via SBSCs but many people find it difficult to work that way.

I therefore suggest that SFW should be returned to its former top-level position in the File Menu (with possibly an additional Link in the “Export As” sub-menu for those who find the Export functions useful).

No-one should be allowed to dicker with the current SFW interface (which fulfills the needs of most of us entirely admirably!) just for the convenience of trying to squash it into an “Export As” workflow (which frankly only really benefits Graphic Designers for Web devices and is currently of absolutely no value to Photographers at all!

This is a very ignorant comment. File size optimization is arguably more important today than it was in the era of 56k modems. More and more internet usage is driven by mobile and as such are constricted by tight data usage limits. You may or may not want people viewing images on their iPhones, but they do, and even if they are using an iPad, data plans are extremely limiting and expensive. Web designers have ignored this trend for so long, assuming fat broadband pipes, and visiting even the most basic web sites use far, far too much data.

It’s a real shame Adobe is removing this very useful tool, and I hope they look to replace it with something even more efficient.

Not necessarily true. That’s a coders perspective on life. Designers spend all day with one hand firmly clamped to the mouse. Removing it and using both hands to access a complex keyboard “shortcut” is not time saving, it is time wasting. Also some people (especially designers) think visually not in non-intuitive IT commands. Having to remember a growing series of cryptic keystroke combinations goes against the whole idea of a visual interface.

The existing keyboard shortcut uses one hand. You can simplify the shortcut to whatever you like using Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts. Otherwise, use the panel for one click access if you prefer a visual method.

No it’s not. I’m a designer and when I’m in photoshop I keep one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard for all the keyboard shortcuts. Even when I’m painting with a wacom tablet, I have the pen in one hand and the other on the keyboard (even on wacom tablets with lots of buttons on them). Keyboard shortcuts are faster. Period.

That’s not a ‘coder’s perspective on life.’ It is an experienced Photoshop user’s perspective, and I share it. Nothing about keyboard shortcuts is holding you back from doing things the slow, painful way if that’s what you prefer, but those of us whose living depends on our hands, eyes and our choice of tools get a great benefit from being able to use, and customize, keyboard shortcuts.

Relying on the mouse slows you down. Your choice. Keeping your hand on the mouse risks long-term injury. Again, your choice. I’ve been there, and I’m being kind enough to share this with you: using shortcuts instead of the mouse is healthier for your hands.

Choice is the key word up there. I appreciate having the choice of not using the mouse just to toggle an option or call up an export panel full of options. You can appreciate having the choice to use your mouse.

i hate– emphasis: hate- keyboard shortcuts. they interrupt my workflow, i can never remember them. one attraction of photoshop historically is users have had alternative ways of doing things– we could use keyboards or mouses as we wished. shoving us into keyboard shortcuts or sub-menus suggests lack of respect for long-time users who have their individualized processes for image processing.

Yes. Currently I use the Save for Web to save the individual slices of an image, along with the HTML. I then open the HTML in Dreamweaver to finalize it. If you could design an Export As workflow for that it would be most appreciated. Thanks!

you can already save all the slices at once! using the ‘save for web’. The benefit of using that is so that you can change the all the file types of the images within 1 window to minimize the file size of the images. and check that the images look fine together. i use this feature all the time, one of the main reasons for save to….. web

Yes, definitely need this for email marketing. I’ll receive a PSD with all the art (and placeholder copy). I slice it up, rename the slices I need (to a naming convention that makes sense to me, ending with widthxheight – as in moda_hero_580x120) and then export those slices.

Then I have to go into the directory and get all the filenames and copy them into Textpad.

Then I FTP the slices, go into the ESP, clone my template and then start replacing image URLs.

I know we can use Artboards to design from now on, but previous designed sites still going to require slices to be updated easily. I wish to stay too. It is a very useful way to achieve some layouts without coding, specially if you are a designer.

I use save for web for outputting slices for email templates. The rest of the web universe has moved on admittedly, but email has not. I am deeply disappointed you are considering removing it in the future. I will use the new workflow for web and mobile development, but email still needs the save for web feature. I do not see Microsoft ever allowing HTML5 for email, they still can’t even display an animated gif. I have attended email seminars, and everytime the message is ‘new is coming soon’ but it never does. Please do not remove this feature, I know I am not the only designer that wishes it to remain.

Your other reply to Leigh makes it sound like slices aren’t critical. “Is that something you’d like?” makes it sound like you didn’t have any plans to support slice until we started bringing it up. Can you clarify?

I think ideally, the only thing people want is a modern Save for Web. Call it Export As if you want. But every feature in Save for Web is useful to us and some of your replies don’t seem to show that you understand that.

Okay, thank you for the reply and that’s an interesting thing you brought it up. I wonder what these customers are doing instead of slicing? I personally uses slices every day or at least every other day in my daily work. So they are monumentally important to my workflow.

I think Slicing is ONE of the most important features. How are are you supposed to slice out artwork for web? If I have a PSD in front of me of a website I need to be able to slice out all the icons, buttons, graphics and save for web in one go. How else would you be expected to do that? A lot of the time the artwork I get, the image required to be sliced are not in individual layers. Please let me know if I have missed this point somewhere? But slicing is ultimately more important than anything else.

Why the **** did you remove “Save for Web”? As a web designer this menu option VITAL. Not only that, but you gave it an idiotic hotkey (shift+ctrl+alt+s) which is completely useless since if you have an fn-key in the way it’s impossible to do comfortably with one hand.

A lot of people want it back in the menus. A lot of people use the menus to access it. A lot of people prefer using the menus to access it.

The feedback from the users has been loud, but the message we are getting from Adobe is that we aren’t using Photoshop efficiently… feels like a slight.

Menus serve a purpose: they are easier to understand, require no memory and are easier to teach. As noted in the other help thread, I teach interns. It’s easier for them to use menus to access features then jot notes about shortcuts they will have to remember and consult.

A keyboard shortcut should not be the solution for a short coming of making a feature more unefficient to use with it.

I prefer only to use a few keyboard shortcuts, since so many do different functions on different programs. The last thing I want to do is try and remember yet another one as I work to get my clients’ jobs out using probably the most critical feature of Photoshop for web. I only wish I bought CS6 instead of CC. The worse thing is now PS is out of sync web-wise with AI and ID, which means they will be soon undergoing that same convoluted makeover.
Why the team couldn’t have made all their compression tweaks within the simple and intuitive SFW is beyond me.
All this is no issue to kids now learning the program and to those using it a short time, since they will have no point of reference as to how easy it was before, but as with how Adobe didn’t fold the superior aspects of Golive into Dreamweaver, it’s hard for us long-time users to see this happen.

The keyboard shortcuts for Save For Web are the same in PS & AI. You can customize the keyboard shortcut if you want: Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts…. InDesign has always been different web-wise from AI and PS.

Thanks, I misspoke about ID, but keyboard shortcuts are not the answer. So many of us now feel that you guys will do what you want to do despite the adverse reaction from your loyal core users. I see nothing coming from Adobe to the contrary. This latest release of CC has also rendered favorite plugins (including now disabled font management) either dead or crippled. Would it have been that hard to give the major players a heads up?

OK so how about this: Can we make the hot key for “Legacy” simpler for those teams who do NOT want a “no dialog” export? I WANT the dialog step for “Save for Web” to allow my team the ability to change settings in a split screen environment and make choices on compression vs file size.

I tried the “Export as” dialog and it is basically a really stripped down, less functional version of Save for Web without a split screen. My team changes export settings dozens of times during a single day, depending on the application. Moving everything into a “Quick Export” and burying all the settings in preferences does not serve your customers. It doesn’t save time.

Honestly, it seems like a somewhat desperate attempt to spin off a utility as a new program to squeeze a little more cash out, rather than anything that actually serves your customers.

I image that this is great for photographers. For those of who work primarily in the web, and need a fast and simple manner to optimize images for sites, this isn’t functional and is going to reduce efficiency by adding extra steps. Making basic functionality that I use every day “legacy” drastically reduces my confidence in this application as the industry standard.

Actually, these changes were made for application and web designers. Export as and Adobe Generator are next generation, extensible/customizable tools that can make exporting designs and web graphics faster, automatic and with more optimization options like PNGQuant and SVG. It’s really cool tech. Check it out:

Generator lacks the ability to do side-by-side comparisons (2-up, 4-up), yes? The ability to preview in a browser, show size/download time…none present in Generator that I can find. Setting size and percentage, etc., not nearly as intuitive.

Generator saves the optimized assets in the same directory as the original file. This frequently isn’t the case in my workflow, so now I’m tracking down where PS saved the new asset so that I can FTP it to wherever I’m working instead of choosing where to place it myself to begin with…an exponential time-suck.

I’m not saying that the tech isn’t cool or impressive, but, as a developer/designer (the group that this “workflow” is supposed to target), I’m telling you that this is counter-intuitive, stripped down, and doesn’t offer the control that I expect from professional applications.

So now I have to find the full functionality buried in a menu…another time-suck… and wish there was a way to revert back to the previous release, all while hoping that “Legacy” doesn’t mean that Adobe decides to cut SFW entirely and leave web professionals in the cold one day.

If there was a practical back-end reason to replace Save For Web, then the release shouldn’t have happened until all of SFW’s functionality was replicated elsewhere. The functionality of Export As is so limited and poor that it’s completely useless. This half-baked solution is disruptive, clunky, and has zero benefits for actual users. Not to mention, workarounds like setting your own keyboard shortcuts should ABSOLUTELY NOT be neccesary to easily access core features of a program.

Hi Natalie, please re-read the post above. Save for Web is still available and works the same as it always has. Further, from Stephen’s post above: “Save for Web will not be removed without replacing these capabilities in a new and improved workflow.” You can still access the feature via the menu. Ask any professional – if a command is integral to you workflow, taking moment to learn a shortcut to the command will save you tons of time whether the command is first level command or in a sub-menu.

I agree. Save for Web should have been left where it was as it is still clearly better than the new “Export As” solution which they are highlighting as the future. As I understand it, “Export As” exists in the 2015 release because they needed a way for us to export artboards. And they did not want to add this functionality to Save for Web because it’s outdated. That’s great and I understand that perfectly. But “Export As” is not at the same level of functionality as Save for Web is. “Export As” should really have been titled “Export Artboards” until its feature set is on par with Save for Web.

Placing Export As above Save for Web in the menu (and adding the term “Legacy”) sends the message that Adobe doesn’t really see the benefit of Save for Web. I personally don’t believe that’s actually true. But it’s the message it sends and it’s understandably worrying for some people.

This is a useless and nonsensical “improvement.” I echo the sentiments of everyone else here, this is about the ONLY command I use in the file menu. I don’t care about the menu placement, but the fact that you have taken something that has been there for decades, is a hugely critical part of my workflow, and thrown it into a “legacy” category because Adobe is too lazy to maintain the feature, is insulting. Furthermore, that “Export As…” is a featureless, mind numbing joke. Least you could have done was completely mimic Save For Web before hiding it on us, but in typical Adobe fashion the future looks the same as the past… Take away features that have been around forever and then re-release them in the future to get me to buy the product again. You have done this shamelessly with Adobe Audition, but I always thought Photoshop would be above that miserable marketing strategy. Don’t you people realize why Photoshop became the world’s most popular image editor? HINT: It’s not because of stupidly moving things around, it’s because for many years a lot of thought went into the product to actually improve it, and great respect was paid to those of us who did use it. Now you just look at it as a cash cow, whoring it out with fake “new” features and changing the splash screen every 12 months. GET BACK ON TRACK!!!!!!!

Please re-read the article. We haven’t taken any features away. Save For Web is still available. We have improved the workflow. These changes were made for application and web designers. Export as and Adobe Generator are next generation, extensible/customizable tools that can make exporting designs and web graphics faster, automatic and with more optimization options like PNGQuant and SVG. It’s really cool tech. Check it out:

I read the article just fine, thank you. You have NOT IMPROVED the workflow, you have made it more cumbersome. “Next generation” would be fine if it had the functionality of the “current generation.” Some of us export a LOT of JPEGs and GIFs, and Save For Web is very good at that. Your new “Export As…” does not have any options in the dialog other than some very rudimentary output size settings. Where are the saved profiles? Where are the metadata options? You said yourself that Save For Web is essentially being forgotten about. I think the Photoshop team has severely underestimated how useful and functional Save For Web is and has been for so long. As others have said, these are the kinds of changes that make end users doubtful as to how committed Adobe is to the product and all of our livelihoods. If the past is any indication, what I think we all fear is that one day “Save For Web” will just be gone from the menu. Maybe it will be available as an “extra plugin” for a while (Kind of like what you did with the TWAIN import). And then maybe one day, that will no longer work. The appearance of reduction in functionality is a major problem with modern software, and something that those of us who depend on these features don’t take lightly.

Per the help article on Export: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/export-artboards-layers.html “Note: Color profiles and metadata are not yet embedded in exported images. This functionality may be available in a future release.” The main use for export at the present time is for screen and web designers – not for banging out large color managed photographs with a bunch of IPTC metadata. As most UI is not color managed in browsers and mobile devices, designers often start in sRGB – and color profiles and metadata generally aren’t used as they just bloat the file size. Save for Web is still the tool for exporting color managed photographs with metadata for the web. Again, “Save for Web will not be removed without replacing these capabilities in a new and improved workflow.”

I tried Export As – it took 13 seconds to load the image before I got chance to save
I tried Export->Save for web – it took 2 seconds to load the image, even with the extra step that has now been introduced.
I tried several times just to be sure it wasn’t a first time through caching problem. It takes 5-6 times longer to do Export As, and the number of options are much less (it won’t do looped gifs for example from what I can see) and you can’t choose background colour etc. I think the performance needs to improve significantly before people will start using Export As.

YES, I get the same problem…the image is constantly “processing.” And I agree with other comments that this “awesome” new feature should not have replaced the Save for Web until it was more complete. The animated GIF options are useful for Web designers, too.

I don’t think Adobe gets it – some people don’t like or don’t regularly use Keyboard Shortcuts. Till there was a comparable tool that worked as well developed, there was no reason AT ALL to remove it from the file menu and bury it further under FILE > EXPORT > SAVE FOR WEB whatsoever other than ticking off people who loathe keyboard shortcuts or would prefer to use their brain to store more important information. And if you tell me to re-read the article, I’m going to wrap my head in duck tape to keep it from exploding all over the room. We get what you did – just not WHY you did it.

The reason it was moved to group it with the other export commands. As Photoshop adds commands, sometimes it becomes necessary to reorganize the menu items. Honestly, we didn’t do it to tick anyone off. If Save for Web is important and you use it often, taking a moment to commit a shortcut to memory will speed up your workflow in the long run whether the command is in the main menu or a sub-menu.

As I read through your replies I am totally disgusted with your response. ‘Change your keyboard shortcuts’ or use the new export feature that is incredibly slow and a less efficient use of my time (also in the Export sub menu). Did you even survey your customers before making a critical change to your product? I mostly use Photoshop for editing photographs of high end cars along with some webdesign. The new Export — Export As feature appears to save 100% jpg’s at what would be about 74% in the old save for web feature. You talk about Artboard documents as if they are a standard but you fail to look at how and why people use existing features that have been in place for a decade or more. I really don’t give two s#$%’s about Artboard documents or SVG. You make some kind of general assumption that Photoshop is only used by web designers and plan your user interface around that…. I am seriously considering cancelling my CC subscription over this.

Hi Seth, The main use for Export at the present time is for screen and web designers – not for banging out large color managed photographs with a bunch of IPTC metadata. As most UI is not color managed in browsers and mobile devices, designers often start in sRGB – and color profiles and metadata generally aren’t used as they just bloat the file size. Save for Web is still the tool for exporting color managed photographs with metadata for the web. Again, “Save for Web will not be removed without replacing these capabilities in a new and improved workflow.”

The point I was trying to make was that placing save for web in a sub menu is completely unacceptable. I would be more accepting of this change if there was a new menu drop down at the top (file, edit, etc) for export then save for web. Also the new Export As feature compresses images far more than the old save for web. My issue with this change is that I have to change my workflow to accommodate changes by adobe. When you have been doing something for several years and an application you trust and depend on daily makes such a change it is really frustrating to adapt knowing that it may be changed again in the future. I don’t care about metadata!

Fire your UI designer, replace your PM.
Its great when I can’t save and I am late for a meeting because I updated this clunky software and now have to ask google how to save my images. Then I find out you are phasing it out. What a joke. This painfully reminds me of “ImageReady”. Nothing you did fixed that mess. I was forced to use third party slicers. I can’t believe you would do this to a core feature. I don’t care what your methodology or plan was to replace, migrate, or transition this feature. Leave it alone already, this is the most used feature by far in your entire program suite. We all know the problem, you bought somebody else’s software and you don’t know how to maintain or build upon it so you are replacing it. Maybe hire back some of those guys from ImageReady you bought and canned. I can’t wait for a serious competitor to come along because the only reason you are in business is that one hasn’t come along; yet.

I helped develop Save for Web and ImageReady 15 years ago and port over its most used features to Photoshop (animation, slicing, comps, multi-layer select, etc). Most of the ImageReady team is still around – spread across Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro and other projects.

I’ve got to echo the sentiments of everyone on here. The “Save for Web” menu item needs to be returned to the root of the FILE menu IMMEDIATELY. This is the menu option that many of us go to dozens if not hundreds of times a day. And burying it three levels down makes ZERO sense (other than to your developers).

I have so many fricking shortcuts committed to memory — I really don’t need another when my motor-memory was doing just fine using the FILE menu.

I’ve just spent this morning setting up multiple variants of an animated MPU using the new Artboards feature, as I thought it sounded like a neat way of keeping multiple options of the same layout together. When I came to export each artboard as a .gif, my jaw dropped as I realised ‘Save for web’ does not allow you to export artboards separately…and then when you choose ‘Export > Export As’ you don’t have the option to adjust the colours quality animation etc (I need each artboard to be under 40kb which I would normally achieve by adjusting the options under ‘Save for Web’). So I’m now having to rebuild each artboard as seperate files, so I can export the .gifs properly. Mind-boggling oversight. Thanks for wasting my morning!

Choice of metadata to retain (really, THIS is the dumbest thing about Export)

Understandable quality settings

Presets

Keyboard shortcut

Placement in the top-level File menu where it belongs

Remembering previous setting instead of always going back to PNG

Color palettes for PNG and GIF

Preview with file size

Those of us who have graphics tablets often don’t use keyboard shortcuts much. I have to put down the pen and move both hands to the keyboard. Submenus can be a pain with a pen and again, it just adds time to the operation.

Frankly, many of us are photographers and don’t use Photoshop for graphic design. How about remembering us? I will NEVER use Artboards and don’t want good features removed because of some superfluous design functionality that you tacked on to an image processing and retouching program.

What you SHOULD have done was simply re-implement SFW in whatever new development framework you are now using. That way you could add on your new features and nobody would be complaining.

Considering all of the messages you guys are getting about Save for Web moving to a submenu, maybe now would be a good time to consider giving your users the option to re-organize the menus? Go to Edit > Menus… and let us drag and drop different menu items to create a completely customized experience.

Why is a BETA functionality that is not finished and experimental not in a sub-menu Called EXPERIMENTAL ? Why is a half finished feature in a prime spot and the working and proven workhorse feature hidden?

That is just a mess up, it needs to be corrected. Put your Export into a subcategory and see if someone uses it. If the feature is good and working and people use it move it to the prime spot in the menu. This is total nonsense. And repeating your advice read the article is not helping anyone. Instead the feedback should show you that users are not getting it – and forcing them to read something over and over again to decipher an idea some developer had without consultation of an usability expert makes no sense. Maybe you should read the responses of YOUR customers once more?

I use this feature daily, is maybe the most important feature because I make dozens of banners and ads and ‘Export as’ does not work the same, you can get way better image quality and reduced sizes using “Saves for web”, plus when every KB is important, you want to get absolute control of the result and that is why I pay my subscription every month.

I can use the command perfectly fine, in fact I’m always working in a rush so I barely use menus, but I just came here with a problem, to read that this is going to ‘perhaps’ be removed in the future, WHAT!? You can ‘rest assured’ I’ll go back to any old version of Photoshop like CS4 and quit my subscription all in the same day.

The problem that took me here is that now when I save for web, PS doesn’t remember the last folder so I have to browse all the time to the folder and as I told before, I’m always short of time. So using commands saves time but browsing to a folder does not and knowing the feature may be discontinued des not do me any good.

Man – now THAT’S a solution – it’s as though Adobe has never heard the expression – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” i mean really – all the stuff they COULD be doing and someone chimes in and says, “hey – why don’t we move the Save for Web option”. ridiculous!

Dave – you’re right – some days i do use it like a 100 times. ginormous pain!!

I too find the new “export as” feature a bit basic. Options like colorprofile are needed and not because I do print design. I was just designing a desktop wallpaper in the Adobe RGB colourspace and needed to convert to sRGB. “Export as” doesn’t have this option. When using save for web I noticed that artboards are not properly supported, lucky me I used artboards.
So I tought let’s be smart and simply convert the document to the sRGB colorprofile before using export as. “Convert to profile” flattens the whole document to a single layer! So it seems that function has issues with artboards as wel.

After reading the article I understand why this was removed due to legacy code, but as someone else pointed out, where you guys screwed up is the fact that you should not have rolled this out until the new functionality was ready which will sit under the File menu and NOT File > Export > …..

I think what is even worse is your responses to the comments of YOUR users. It’s like you guys are not listening to pretty much what everyone else is saying. We DO NOT want to use yet another shortcut. Most people like myself use so many shortcuts, adding yet another one is ridiculous. I personally use Save for Web all the time, literally everything I do in Photoshop almost ends up with Save for Web 98% of the time. The File menu was very convenient. Not the extra steps just kills this workflow. For your sake, I hope someone actually listens to the users instead of coming up with excuses. I think the users of your product are savvy enough to read what was posted, you guys are the ones not listening to the reason why this solution is mediocre.

I really hate that Adobe made this change to the CC programs without disclosing it to would be buyers first… I guess all I can do is add it to the list of things I hate about CC in general… Let’s see, I think I’m up to #124 now…

It should have been left where is was until a full replacement for all functionality has been created. Virtually every day I need to slice out elements from a bigger PSD design where some parts are exported as a png but others may be better suited as gifs or pngs – chosen by looking at the filesize for each one and the quality of the image. The export function from the file menu seems pretty useless to me and it only really works from the layers panel if the designer has made the layers the correct size as they will be used in the final web page – which is rare.

I know the tool is still there, but the Legacy label does bring in doubts about the functionality being kept (although you say it will) and if it is will it be dumped into some buried area? As you have relegated already it seems that you don’t consider it an important tool, but looking above enough of us do.

The more of us that express an opinion the more likely it will be given the prominence that we need it to have.

On the shortcuts point, I use a mixture of shortcuts and a menus. This is one I use the menu for – although it looks like I need to change the same workflow i’ve been using for many years.

There appears to be no way to do a side-by-side comparison in export? I don’t understand how this simple yet so critically useful feature couldnot be provided in a “better” replacement such as export? How in the new replacement do we choose an appropriate level of JPG compression when we cannot see what data has been lost by comparing side-by-side?
The new export window is a non-resizable dialog. Why can’t that window be sizeable so we can view the true quality of the to-be-exported JPG at full screen and zoom in with it large?

My thoughts exacly. You hit the two points I had in my mind. Adobe, please think about this. There are two quite important things missing, that I really need: Seeing the image that I’m working on and comparing it to the original. The first is blocked by the non-resizable window. The second by, well, not being able to compare.

I use “SAVE FOR WEB” literally on every project. Please don’t remove or rename this feature. I was FURIOUS when I couldn’t find it this morning after updating. Please put things back and respect your paying customer’s wishes, per the comments on this page. Thank you!

Yep, sounds like you guys got a mess on your hands…. Not a wise choice. I vote you get your developers working on an efficient replacement. Is this an “great” example of a legacy function that was not documented completely by past developers – or have you lost your programmers who knew how this function works???? I think you get an “F” on this development idea – now go back and get to WORK..!!!

Now i have to make a work around and batch all geneterator assets with Adobe Fireworks and get excelent filesize results with no artefacts – but this takes time and it’s a bad workflow. I would expect that Adobe PS would be a lot better in compressing files by now – specially than Fireworks, which haven’t changed for 3 years now.

For mobile and webdesign i need to have a very good balance between filesize and quality, PS is giving me just good quality – result my customers have to load a much larger files with more traffic for the same visible quality
– which is an performance killer!

I’m not satisfied with this situation – would be you?

*I can’t even ad any attributes like: progressive,smoothing or anything else – why not? And why can’t i save the generator assets in a directory of my choise?

I’ve compared the legacy ‘save for web’ and the new ‘export as’ option, it seems like the new export as option wins hands down. I used ‘save for web’ a lot for file optimization, and used batch to generate those. The new ‘export as’ failed to do so. I can’t even record it in action. Is there any way to enhance my workflow so that I can set custom folder and export as into that folder instead of pop-up everytime? *Don’t tell me to tick the preference to ‘export files to assets folder next to the current document’ because it will create a lot of folders.*

We are aware that you can’t record the Export As functionality as an action right now and have done some work to resolve this in the next update. For now, the fastest way to use Export As is as the Quick Export and choosing the option to “export files to assets folder next to the current document” in the preferences. Sorry.

Export slices needed urgently please – in fact it is critical. What is the work around?
Just wasted half an hour trying to find it in the new Photoshop 2015. I ended up here. Work is due today and I am not able to do it. NOT HAPPY

I must be missing something in the new Export As settings. Where is the option to export an animated .gif file? When I was finally able to export it (it took forever for the image to even load in the first place, then when I switched from the default PNG to GIF it took a long time to reload and I ended up having to cancel and do it again.

My specs are solid and up until now I have never had this delay in performance–which was then rewarded with a flat .gif file.

I’ve used Photoshop since 1994 and this is the first time I feel there has been a huge step back in my most important Adobe product.

I do love the new artboard feature in terms of creating web banners and flash banner concepts.
However not being able to save for web from artboards is kind of a deal breaker, a lot of our media buys have specific file sizes. The only way to save a file to the media buy specification is through the save for web dialogue box. But if I can’t do this with artboards then what’s the point. Unless I am missing something?

I don’t use save for web to save for web, but I make constant use of it to export multiple slices out of large artboards, which I use as standalone illustrations or for sequential animation in e.g. AfterEffects.

I will be extremely cross if SFW is lost and there is not an equivalent functionality for saving slices. Some of the correspondence above made it sound like this was a minor feature that might get quietly dropped. Please please no!

If you’re going to improve upon SFW functionality, the one thing that I’d request is to make the preview optional when you first open the dialogue. When exporting an extremely large file with lots of slices, it can take 15 minutes to get the preview up. It would be terrific if I could just export the slices I want using the settings that I want, without having to wait, as the actual file writing is pretty quick.

My one observation of the current state of the nascent Export As function is that the onscreen preview is astonishingly slow.

Using CC2015. Although it says in the Export > Save for Web Legacy preview window the “weight” of the picture is going to be reduced. Photoshop does not seem te remember those settings. Original 6.75 M resizing 70% should give 574,3 K. I rename the picture while exporting. But if I reopen the “resized” picture it still is 6.75M. Any ideas what I do wrong???

Move SFW back to top level menu. Had 4 people come to me after the change and ask where it was, and it took me a while to find it. Glad I am not only one furious with this change, and I am a web designer, who this was meant to be helping?! Someone dropped a b@llock here as we say in Blighty. The comments above are clear, it isnt your reasoning for future changes, its the fact you have moved it in the menu, and it adds time. I dont, as a web designer and EPOS system admin using multiple packages, need yet another shortcut to remember, whatever I make it!

Adobe, why do you keep ruining our workflow! This is it! I’m done with you guys! I’m never upgrading to your new software versions ever again. It makes me feel like you don’t have any REAL WORLD beta testers. There are no web designers on the planet who would’ve given you a green light on this new set up. The new Export As dialog is terrible compared to the Save for Web dialog. And why did you put it in a Sub Menu—talk about killing workflow. And the shortcut? Are you kidding? 4 buttons? I have to do finger gymnastics just to make it happen. Come on Adobe!

Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to “save for web” from the layers panel. I don’t see a way to do this for groups,layers, etc — only for the entire image. If this is the case, it is definitely unhelpful.

Also, why are we unable to have control over which png format we want to use when using the new “export as” feature?

Save For Web isn’t available from the layers panel, but you can right-click on a layer or group or set of layers and choose either “Quick Export” or “Export As…”, if that works for your workflow.

In Export As, you can choose between PNG-8, PNG with Transparency checked (PNG-32) and PNG without Transparency checked (PNG-24). The same options are available for Quick Export in Preferences->Export.

All these silly and small-potato changes and updates that *CONSTANTLY BREAK FUNCTIONALITY* (despite following the detailed instructions, I’m still not seeing the plugin in PS) are really getting to be annoying. Makes me miss good ol’ CS 6

I use save for web more than almost any other feature. The new exports are in no way a replacement. Very disappointed by this move.

Please at least move Save for Web back to the main menu. And whatever you do don’t eliminate it. It is an essential function used daily by nearly everyone.

For now I am not updating to Photoshop 2015 in the office just because of this change (I have an office and a home subscription – updated at home – much to my dismay after discovering this unfortunate change.)

Adobe needs to listen to their customers. Save For Web needs to be standard feature. I to used it everyday. It is just idiotic what they did to attempt to replace it. One of the dumbest moves Adobe has made. They say it is an old feature and not worth pursuing. Okay then update the thing! You have time to load up every feature under the sun in Photoshop that most photographers don’t even use! Remember this program is called PHOTOSHOP! PHOTO, get it, PHOTO!
The steps I have to go through to save an image as a jpeg that includes keywords is absolutely stupid. Plus I found out the using the Export changes the color of the original image file!

Agree with people here. The new “Export” does not seem top have an easy way to

1. Compare versions of different quality side by side
2. Change the size of the dialog box window so I can see the entire image
3. Convert to sRGB
4. Easy animation settings
5. Easy preview and metadata

Is there some hidden place these options exist in “Export”?

To make it worse, the new “artboards” mess up legacy Save for web. Why not just make the image the same as the artboard? This makes no sense.

I’d be fine with moving it to a submenu, but it seems to have been broken and “replaced” with something with less functionality and convenience.

Hi Alice,
Thanks a lot for your feedback. Almost everything on your list is a high priority for our team to get into the new Export workflows soon. With regards to #4 “Easy animation settings”, I assume you are referring to the ability to export animated gifs?

Save for web is probably my top 3 most used under File, what a horrible and unnecessary move. Every time there is a new update of my adobe products I dread it. Something is always changed for the worse. Just updated and now I’m having permissions issues, I cant open half my adobe products, I cant save for web legacy… I have to wonder if these products are even tested before release. PLEASE MOVE IT BACK!!!

I just download Adobe CC 2015 today.Has any one experience dull picture using save for web legacy ? I compare side by side with regular file save it was significant more dull. Usually I use save for web and can’t tell the difference with large file I save. It’s not the same like it used to. Am I missing some setting? Thanks!

CC 2015 has a serious bug in the Legacy Save for Web when exporting slices. Even if the original image is JPEG and JPEG is selected as the export format it exports some JPEG and some GIF at random. Nobody noticed this yet? It needs to be fixed. Still using CS5.5 because it works. How do I really feel?…I want my money back! This is not the only issue with CC 2015.

Removing the save for web from the main menu is the most annoying thing for me. Why change and complicate something that designers have been using for years? I don’t understand the logic. Please put it back on your next update or at least a preference choice.

It’s really a shame to lose this functionality…
Tried to live with it for the last 10 days, and find myself constantly being frustrated by the new layout.
The new export tools are extremely limited, and there is no “better” workflow available….
why make one of the most used functions of photoshop legacy instead of building on it and adapting it into something better?

It’s really a shame – Have rolled back to an older version of photoshop until it’s fixed.

Save For Web is always grayed out and inaccessible.
The quick PNG export saves out a dark version of what you’re seeing in PS.
‘Save As’ only has 7 options now, not including JPG or PNG.
Now reverting to 2014 and hoping for returned functionality, and turning off auto updates.

Slicing and save for web is pretty much all I do with Photoshop, and I do it almost every day. After some initial alarm at the prospect of losing SFW, I took time to get familiar with Export As, and in some ways I consider it an improvement for my particular workflow. However, the inability to export slices with Export As is problematic. The ability to decouple the group and layer structure of the document from the exported assets it critical for people like me, who receive PSDs from many different designers and have to export images to weave into HTML & CSS. In the PSD I happen to be working on right now, the designer placed a single vector smart object into the document that contains icons arranged into a multi column layout. I need to export each icon as an individual image so that I can drop them into a responsive layout and allow them to move independently (yes, I could just save it out as a sprite, but there would be a ton of wasted space and it would be a pain to go back later and figure out all of the offsets). Slices can do that. Export As cannot. So now I’m doing some things with Export As and other things with slices and SFW. That’s clunky.

The switch to Export As seems to make a number of assumptions about the way documents are structured, and the way that they are exported. If I were creating the documents, I wouldn’t mind changing the way I structure them in order to make them easier to export. However I can’t expect every designer who sends me files to know how to structure their layers and groups in a way that makes my life easier.

The new “Export” option does not seem to give the option to include the EXIF data; “Save for Web” used to give you the option to include or exclude. Is this functionality missing, or locked away somewhere I can’t find it?

I use Save for Web every day, and don’t like to see it relegated to “Legacy” status. I would like to be able to easily automate to save multiple widths of the same photograph for Web Responsive sizes, with Save for Web’s optimizing options available. If Adobe has provided a way to do this, I would like to know about it. I just found out about the Extract Assets feature that was removed from CC 2014. If I had known it existed, I probably would have used it. So, is there now an easy way to customize settings and export multiple versions of the same photograph? Not layers. Just one (background). The Generate feature in CC 2015 did nothing for me and doesn’t address the feature I’d like to use to have control over the output, without having to have multiple layers.

Hey. I’m getting pretty familiar with this “Generate assets” function. BUT I’m having questions to the “default” layer that can be added. Is it not possible to control the image compression in this layer?

For example, if I have a couple of layers named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, image3.jpg – can I then add a layer on top called “default.jpg80%” or “default.jpg8” to control the compression for all layers? I tried with “default 85%” but that just scales them all down by 85%…

At least “Save for web” should be interchanged for “Share on Behance” in File Menu for the 15.1 update.
The most used features should be in the main menu. Not in a submenu, affects workflow. Are you think we use every 2-3 minutes: Share on Behance? REAL WORKFLOW PLEASE!
I assume you changed SFW to a submenu to make us try Export. Big Mistake, as I seen it, is a Beta yet.
Maybe, next year, for PS 2016, Adobe Generator will be able to replace SFW, for now, get back our Menu in File Menu please.

I second moving “Save for web” or even the new “Export as” back to the menu slot of the original “Save for web”. If I ever want to “Share on Behance” I can figure out how to do that without having it take up space on a very important menu. The last time I personally put anything on Behance was probably 2010 (before Adobe bought them). What a joke.

I agree, please don’t bury Save for the Web in a sub menu. As a web designer, I use it ALL the time.
As for the keyboard shortcut, that’s nothing new, I’ve used it for years. Yes, you can do it with one hand, BTW, —but I now have tendinitis from using keyboard shortcuts all day and have reverted to using the menu once again.
Hopefully you guys will come up with a nice streamlined solution as a replacement for SFW.

I don’t care if a keyboard short cut saves time, I don’t use this function enough to justify giving it a shortcut I won’t remember. But I use it frequently enough to be very annoyed by this. How is Adobe so consistently out of touch with it’s own users, or is it just company policy to not care since you know we have no where else to go?

this would be really nice, if it wasn’t horribly broken. You know, like actually working.

hey, Generator seems great — but only for a fraction of Photoshop users. The rest of us, who don’t do UI design, don’t really care.

What we’d really like to do is export images in different formats — which we can no longer do. You see, as I said, the function is broken.

We can turn Generator off (because it’s useless). But then Export As just turns it back on again.

And then it spins.

That’s it. It just spins.

We’ve been able to recreate this error on just about every machine we’ve tried it on. Open an image, go to File > Export > Export As… and the window opens with a pinwheel. No image. Nothing. Just spinning. You can Cancel, but that’s it. So right now I have an entire department trying to use this fancy-pants new Export, and not getting any work done.

And I’ve been to several message boards, forums and support sites that all say the same thing: “download most recent version…” “delete C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc” (from my Mac), “put in a new graphics card…” And apparently this issue has been going on for a year now, and still isn’t fixed.

I’m all for leaving Save for Web behind — it’s clunky and slow, and Generate seems to be faster. Unfortunately, without additions to its workflow, it’s not going to do what I need it to.

As a matter of routine, at my company we need to export multiple language versions of mobile screenshots, across many different aspects and platforms. This is achieved by putting as many screenshots as possible into 1 PSD as slices (although we still need to split them up across multiple PSDs for performance reasons), and setting the visibility of language-specific layers using Layer Comps (brilliant). This allows us to use an Action to export all the screenshots into named language folders.

Now tell me how there’s any way Generate or Artboards helps me to achieve this? I would like nothing better than to use Generate to output the screenshots, but as far as I can tell, Generate has no support for saving into different folder structures based on the active Layer Comp. (It looks like the team which was working on Generator in 2014 were planning to support this, but the discussion appears to have foundered.)

I hope this (Generate with Layer Comps) is still something you’re considering to support in the future?

I’ve tried a new shortcut, the button pane but I still trying to go File>Save for Web. To many years doing it that way… After a year I still can’t handle it. I am an editorial designer (I do nothing for web), but Save for web was the easiest way to send design proposals to my clients. I will still asking to bring back that menu where it belongs. It is like if Mercedes decided to change the break pedal for a button in the wheel. You just can’t get over it.

I just upgraded from CS2 to CC. It took a while to adjust to the new interface, which I might add it pretty spiffy, and then I began work. And when I went to SFW it appeared not to be there, so I thought. Yes, finally after a minor anxiety attack and some searching I landed on this page – which turned out to be some pretty good late night reading.

Why not just label ‘Open’ and ‘Open Recent’ as Legacy functions? That’s what they are. And I guess it would be prudent to move them to a secondary menu level. And while you’re at it, you can label ‘New’ as a legacy function as well. The fact is that I use SFW three times as frequently as any of those.

Hi Folks,
As an instructor, I IMPLORE YOU to keep/update the Save For Web option in Photoshop.
This has been such a valuable tool to visually show students exactly what differences there are in the export formats of images for screen use. Conceptually there are powerful ah-ha moments, especially at the introductory levels for users new to the environment of Photoshop and new to the lessons of image optimization. You have done such a great job at introducing UI components to the CC suites which make it a much less intimidating product for new users to learn. This is one of the best. Requiring the user to learn, remember and set layer name parameters cuts out a huge introductory and intermediate user base due to it’s complexity. Surely these parameters can be used by advanced users in addition to the Save for Web option. The Save for Web option also currently allows the user to see and gauge the visual balance between image quality and optimization enabling them to get smaller file sizes while judging image quality in real-time. An image-rich site generated with the default Exports can create an interactive medium too bloated for slower connections. PLEASE KEEP SOME KIND OF VISUAL INTERFACE FOR THE EXPORT OF INTERNET DESTINED MEDIA! Thank you.

How do I save an animated GIF, if I have used Artboards in my file? The function adds additional transparant space around my canvas. If I try to delete all canvases and just try to have a “regular” workspace, it increases my canas size to about double too.
The Artboard function/workflow has since its launch, seemed like a feature that was cool in theory, but born too soon.